It is known in the art relating to sensors to provide a sensor that can convert small distances traveled by a body across the sensor into a proportional electrical signal. One possible application for such a sensor is a flowmeter. Such sensors could be used in automotive applications to sense liquid or gas flow, e.g. air mass flow within an automotive fuel system to determine the flow rate of intake air to an engine.
In the past, flow sensors have often been in the form of hot wire devices, pressure sensing devices and turbine devices. Such sensors can be complicated in construction, relatively expensive, require complicated electronic circuits for developing linear output signals and many of them are incapable of determining flow direction.